Saturday, 7 April 2012

Καλή Ανάσταση!

Above you see a postcard that was distributed through the post by one Kevin Childs, pastor of The Rock Church, Conway, South Carolina. Some of the flock thought that the image and caption constituted something of a breach of taste, so Kev apologized, sort of. Terming those who were offended ‘fussy over-churched little Pharisees’ he said he could not care less if they were upset. This probably offended the offended even more, but Kev was unrepentant. No, what really bothered him, on more mature reflection, was the possibility that the image of the splattered bunny rabbit might have pushed unbelievers further from faith. ‘If our attempt at edgy, irreverent outreach cast our church and Christianity in a bad light, blame me.’

It seems that Kev had imagined that seeing a picture of a dead rabbit instead of Jesus shouldering the sins of the world would make people think, hey, those dudes at the Rock Church must be a real fun bunch of guys to hang out with, and they’d come right on over and get saved. Sorry, Kev. If here we have reached the ceiling of your edgy irreverence, you can count us out. It takes more than a squashed rodent to make us admire your daring or swallow the poison you preach. How about this, in reference to the bullying gay school-kids endure: “I have been suspicious from the jump about the avalanche of sentiment toward “anti-bullying.”…I am hesitant about “protecting” the tender sensibilities of one whose demeanor eagerly invites comments because of his/her lifestyle choice.” First off, Kevin, that's unkind, to understate the matter vastly. Secondly, it's lazy: what the fuck does anyone's sexual desire have to do with the stupid advertising jargon of 'lifestyle choice'? What school-kid 'eagerly invites comment' of the kind we are dealing with here? Grudging ree-speck to Kev, however, for publishing my comment on his blog - click on 'poison' in the previous sentence - even if he doesn't reply. Most fundie Christers simply delete what they don't agree with.

The title of the post 'kali anástasi' is what the Greeks will be wishing one another next Saturday, as Jesus is Coming Back from the Dead tonight in the UK and, by popular demand, taking the same act to Greece for the 14th of the month where, if previous years are anything to go by, it will be enthusiastically received. (Starts around midnight.) The Anástasi is the Resurrection, and the feast in celebration of same. I suppose the wish should be left untranslated, unless someone can come up with something better than ‘have a good Resurrection’.

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Quite.

''When the Washington Post telephoned me on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa, I felt at once that this was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humour, the individual and the defence of free expression''

"Nothing optional - from homosexuality to adultery - is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate."

''The four most overrated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics.'

Christopher Hitchens

“It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvellous universe, this tremendous﻿ range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.”

Richard P. Feynman

''Are introverts arrogant? Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts. Also, it is probably due to our lack of small talk, a lack that extroverts often mistake for disdain. We tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours. "Introverts," writes a perceptive fellow named Thomas P. Crouser, "are driven to distraction by the semi-internal dialogue extroverts tend to conduct. Introverts don't outwardly complain, instead roll their eyes and silently curse the darkness." Just so.''

Jonathan Rauch

''One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human beings was their habit of continually stating and repeating the obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallendown a thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well as being obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried about the terrible number of things they didn't know about.''

Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

''The human species, Dinah sometimes thinks, is stark staring mad. People have no sooner got themselves born than they start to imagine the gods want them to flatten their heads, or perforate their genitals, or arrange themselves into hierarchies based on the colour of their skins. The gods require them to avoid eating hoofs, or to walk backwards in certain sacred presences, or to hang up cats in clay pots and light fires underneath them. The gods like them to slaughter birds and make incisions in their own skulls. The gods have put the banana on this earth so that the human species can apprehend that fruit as a miraculous revelation of the Holy Trinity. It has to do with their singular ability to think and dream in symbols. This is what makes the species so vicious. It's also what makes them great poets.''

Barbara Trapido'Frankie and Stankie'.

On God

Sick of it, whatever it's called, sick of the names.I dedicate every pore to what's here.

Ikkyu1394-1481

on trying not to be an arse

On Buddhist meditation:

'Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, criticize people, all your weird little ways. You can know all that with some sense of humor and kindness. By knowing yourself, you’re coming to know humanness altogether.'